DIY Your Way to a Better Pregnancy

Love to do things yourself and be creative? Looking to save money and have a frugal pregnancy? You’ll love these DIY pregnancy projects that will make your pregnancy much easier and save you a little bit of cash, too! Especially if you like to buy green or organic products, sometimes you have to make them yourself to be sustainable and affordable, am I right?

Level Up Your Comfort During Pregnancy

You’ve got some different options during pregnancy:

You could be pretty uncomfortable with a lot of different changes and stressors on your body that you do nothing to alleviate.

Or you could improve your life quite a bit by buying a lot of different products that will reduce a lot of that discomfort and make you feel a whole lot better, but it’s going to cost you quite a bit of money to do so.

Alternatively, you could improve your life a whole lot and have some money left in your wallet by spending a few afternoons nurturing your creativity and working on some projects that make life a whole lot easier. Win!

Below are some fun and easy do-it-yourself projects that really will make pregnancy better, and maybe even cheaper!

(See below the projects for my calculations on if these DIY pregnancy projects will help you be more frugal or not.)

DIY Pregnancy Projects To Try

DIY Pregnancy Bath Salts from Simple Living Mama

DIY Belly Butter from Modern Homestead Mama

DIY Maternity Body Pillow from Gummer Gal

DIY Belly Band by A Beautiful Mess

Is DIY Really A Money-Saver?

Are you really saving money, though?

I did a few simple calculations.

Store Bought Costs of 4 Items

If you bought each of the items below online, here’s about how it would stack up:

Store Bought Bath Salts for Pregnancy: $15

Ready Made Belly Butter: between $10-25, let’s say $15 for that also

Brand New Body Pillow for Pregnancy: wide range, but we’ll settle at $50 for non-organic and up to $130 for organic

So those 4 items would cost you around $92. Oh, pregnancy, why are you so expensive?!

Breakdown of Costs to DIY Same 4 Items

On the other hand, if you take a few hours and DIY those same items, let’s see how much you would spend out of pocket:

Bath salts-All right, I’m going to be honest here and let you know that you are not going to save money upfront by making your own bath salts if you just plan on having a bath or two. By the time you buy a bag of Epsom salts and a bottle of lavender oil, you’re going to pay more than the $15 it will cost you to buy a little bag. However, if you end up using them a couple times a week, you will definitely save money in the long run. I happen to already own both Epsom salts and lavender essential oil, so this one is a no-brainer for me. It might be for you, too! If you do it this way, your upfront costs will be more. But you will pay less than $2 a pound instead of 7.50 a pound-a savings of $11 over the cost of a 2 lb. bag of lavender-scented pregnancy bath salt!

Belly butter-Once again, if you don’t own any of the ingredients in the belly butter, it might cost you a little more to get started, but chances are that you already have some of the essential oils and at least some coconut oil! My local health food store sells things like beeswax by the pound, so you can just buy a small amount, which helps. Here’s what I always do, though, when I make things like this: Go big or go home! I buy the ingredients in larger quantities, make a whole big batch of jars of belly butter or pregnancy tea or whatever it is I’m making, and then offer it up for sale at a good price to my friends so that they get a great organic product for cheap, and I make back my money and effort. Win-win for everybody! I’ve been known to do this with pumpkin pie spice blend before, too! So, who knows if you’d save money on this one?! I’m going to call it a wash because I don’t feel like calculating the prices on drops of rosehip oil, etc. So savings of $0 although you could actually MAKE MONEY with this one!

Body pillow-Here’s where we are going to save some serious cash. Well, maybe. If you decide to go all organic, you will be hard-pressed to save much. The author in the link above bought new organic sheets for about $30 and then 10 pounds of organic cotton stuffing for $80, saving about $20 over buying a brand new organic pillow. However, if you are feeling sassy, like I often do, you might use a thrifted sheet (or even better, one just sitting around your house), but still buy the raw organic stuffing, thus saving about $27 more dollars for a total of almost 50 bucks off the price of the new organic pregnancy body pillow. If organic is not your thing at all, you’ll save a bundle by going with the raw cotton batting that is non-organic.

Belly band-You can buy a yard of stretchy jersey fabric for only $6 or so. You probably have thread, I’m guessing. So you’ll save 50% off the price of a new belly band and keep $6 in your pocket (on the low end!). I will admit, however, to loving the belly bands that have the little non-stick grabby stuff around the edge so that your band stays in place better. If you’d prefer to buy one like that, you might just want to bite the bullet and grab a belly band online. If you do make one for $6, you are saving $6 at a minimum over buying one ready made.

So did we end up saving money? YES!

DIY Bath Salts for Pregnancy: $4 per batch

Do it yourself Belly Butter: Costs about the same once you buy all the ingredients $15

Make your own Organic Body Pillow for Pregnancy: $80 for organic if you use a sheet you already own

Quickly sew a Belly Band: $6

TOTAL SAVED: $67

Creativity Wins The Day

It’s not all about saving money though, is it? That would be a pretty horrible way to live.

Part of the joy of do it yourself projects during pregnancy or otherwise is in the creativity. It’s so freeing to use that right side of our brain to create.

The thriftiness and crafting are downright fun!

Instead of playing Candy Crush, we get to make things with our bare hands. Thus we connect to a long line of creative women who came before us and also created and crafted. It’s a beautiful thing!

I hope you feel inspired to grab some beeswax or a sewing machine and some organic cotton batting and get out there and make something for yourself to uplevel your pregnancy today.

Have you done any amazing DIY pregnancy projects? I’d love to hear about them. Drop a comment below and share!

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About Bethany Dykman

Bethany is a mom of five, wife, doula, writer, marketer, and founder of the blog StrengthLoveBirth.com. If you stopped by for a visit, you'd probably find her with frizzy hair, big earrings, and a huge cup of water and multiple children nearby. She spends most of her time working at her computer or doing random #momlife stuff, like finding out who bled on the couch.

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